Black History

COMMENTARY: Study Linking Relaxers to Cancer is “Fake News”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump says manufacturers have “aggressively misled Black women to increase their profits.” He recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of a client who contracted uterine cancer after using chemical hair straightening products sold by L’Oréal USA. Cheryl Morrow, daughter of Black haircare legend Dr. Willie L. Morrow delivered this letter to Crump and his co-counsel.

Published

4 years ago

November 20, 2022

Oakland Post

Cheryl Morrow, daughter of Black haircare legend Dr. Willie L. Morrow.

By Cheryl Morrow | Special to California Black Media

A major study by the National Institute of Health (NHI) found that women who received hair relaxer treatments at least four times a year had a three times greater risk of uterine cancer. A previous study found a 30% increased risk of breast cancer.

Manufacturers are currently facing lawsuits across the country, because, according to the plaintiffs, they failed to warn them about the cancer risks associated with exposure to toxic chemicals in products.

Cheryl Morrow, daughter of Black haircare legend Dr. Willie L. Morrow delivered this letter to Crump and his co-counsel, and it reads:

“I am the daughter of the greatest textured [hair] beauty scientist in the history of the world, and a legatee of the only industrial revolution for American-born Africans. It is my opinion, American-born Africans represent the greatest human ascent in the modern civilized world as well as in human history.

“Enough is enough.” The exploitation of Black health for profit is ENOUGH!

The latest study of relaxers being linked and making Black women three times more susceptible to uterine cancer is simple junk research. This is an attack. I am taking the NIH study as an attack on our legacy.

What researchers seem to be missing, is that out of all the so-called corrosive salon treatments all races of women receive, relaxers are the one that carry the least amount of processing time. This simply means that researchers have not taken this into consideration, the time exposure factor.

Ben Crump and attorney Diandra Zimmerman, along with their client Jenny Mitchell, blindly filed this lawsuit while being grossly ill-informed.

If you, Attorney Crump want to chase a lawsuit because you think L’Oréal has deep pockets and money to blow just to save its face, I will push to encourage them not to do so. This will cast a stain on an ethical industry and will be an atrocity for an industry that has built enormous wealth and power for Black America.

I will not allow the propaganda machine’s random research to destroy and wither our industrial juggernaut with false concern and hidden agendas. This is fake news and junk research at its best.

I am all for research as my late father Willie Morrow, the greatest scientific mind in the history of beauty science, we’ve had always blazed the trail toward safe innovation for the Black haircare industry. The language attorney Crump and his co-counsel are using is reckless and feckless.

Black hair care is not predatory, and it sickens me to receive countless calls from my peers having to defend our profession from layperson idiocy and bloodthirsty lawyers.

Having spent 19 years in New York City, I have also devoted expertise in this area. This is not about me defending the giant beauty conglomerate L’Oréal — Lord knows I have had my issues with corporate run beauty companies, but food for thought here; the lack of state governed cosmetology boards addressing the scientific aspects of hair and scalps of textured hair Americans and the distinct way it grows and thrives, it just goes to show that all hair (textures) aren’t the same after all.

The apathetic way in which state boards and state policy makers focus on minor issues like cultural styling, which falls under the First Amendment freedom of expression clause, doesn’t deter discrimination from occurring. However, junk research is more sinister. It is about affecting economic bottom lines.

I will not have this happen!

Hair straightener (relaxer), or better known as lye, is a plantation concoction and was originally a Black man’s thing called the Konkaline aka “The Conk” trend.

This was formulated, mixed in the kitchens on plantations and slave camps of America. This was created by Africans on plantations due to our native-born styling implements not accompanying us to the Western world.

Having served as an expert witness in many Black haircare litigations for defendants, relaxers fall under the FDA’s category of depilatories.

This means it is a dissolver and not a penetrator. The nature of high alkaline pH treatments doesn’t interact with skin as you would like them to, nor do they work like most industry professionals, state board officials and chemists have educated us to believe they do.

This is the ignorance my father Willie L. Morrow tried to combat in 1982, but his efforts fell on deaf ears. Correcting this malfeasance is most urgent.

Every state board in the United States should also be sued if you want to go the lawsuit route. To be frank, because the consumer also has a home-based version and buys it at their own discretion, like tap faucet water, your eagerness to pick up on the NIH’s study that is not conclusive is beneath the oath you took when you became an attorney, my dear sir.

I have, and am willing, to educate all Americans and all adjacent professional industries that will join me in making beauty safer. We are a proud industry, with high ethics and I do not appreciate this assassination of Black haircare.

My father would be a soldier in this attack. We have worked countless years and have amassed the most extensive and invaluable texture enhancement scientific data in the industry to date. Black haircare is leading in this regard. Our research is rooted in Afro-textured [hair] science, these findings are sound research that show a different picture on the overall health risks for Black women who relax.

We do have a lot of work to do, however. My legacy will be to return Black haircare to its glory era, the one that I grew up in, the industry that has and should continue to make Black America economically sovereign to create its own version of the American dream.

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After 10-Year Wait, Fillmore Heritage Center Reopens in San Francisco

After serving as the economic and cultural hub of the Fillmore’s historically Black community for more than a decade, the center’s closure ended what was called the “Rebirth of the Cool,” referring to the neighborhood’s role during the height of Black Jazz in the United States.

Published

5 hours ago

June 10, 2026

bpusa-syndication

Rev. Amos Brown of Third Baptist Church addresses community members at the Fillmore Heritage Center ribbon cutting. Photo by Linda Parker Pennington.

By Linda Parker Pennington, Special to The Post

Last Saturday morning, the cloudy skies cleared just as the highly anticipated ribbon-cutting ceremony began, marking the reopening of the Fillmore Heritage Center at 1330 Fillmore and Eddy.

The complex – which had once included Yoshi’s Jazz Club, the Lush Life Art Gallery, the Koret Heritage Lobby, a 54-seat microcinema, and the Black-owned 1300 On Fillmore restaurant – shuttered in 2015.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announcing the reopening of the Fillmore Heritage Center. Erika Scott, owner of Honey Art Studio, looks on with pride. Photo by Linda Parker Pennington.

“The Fillmore is the most important neighborhood in San Francisco’s history for centering Black culture, music, business, and community, and has shaped this City and influenced the entire country,” said San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie to the gathering of more than 100 community leaders, business owners, and public officials. “This building reflects the deep roots of the Fillmore. Urban renewal left deep scars that are still felt today. This Center celebrates a strong Black community that continues to shape San Francisco. I am proud to join the community as we reopen the Fillmore Heritage Center.”

Although the previous stakeholders will not be returning to the center, spaces are available for nonprofit organizations and ventures, such as Fillmore native Ericka Johnson’s Honey Art Studio.

“This Center will be an economic engine and a thriving venue that shines a light on the Black-owned businesses in this neighborhood and lifts the entire district,” Lurie continued. “Our City is committed to this community for the long term.”

“We’re excited to collaborate with the City to finally reopen these doors,” said Ken Johnson, a videographer and community leader who’d been lobbying for the reopening of the center. “It’s an opportunity to showcase the entrepreneurship and creative spirit of this ‘Harlem of the West’ and the ‘Rebirth of the Cool,’ grounded in our uniquely gifted Fillmore community.”

This month, through its Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the city will begin renting the building’s noncommercial spaces for pop-up events celebrating local talent, arts, and entertainment primarily centered in the Fillmore.

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

1 day ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.